1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the operation of scan tools in a semiconductor manufacturing process. More specifically, this invention relates to the recipes used in scan tools, which allow specific scan tools to capture silicon-based defects. Even more specifically, this invention relates to a method of ensuring that the correct recipe is always being used in specific scan tools.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In order to remain competitive, a semiconductor manufacturer must continuously increase the performance of the semiconductor integrated circuits being manufactured and at the same time, reduce the cost of the semiconductor integrated circuits. Part of the increase in performance and the reduction in cost of the semiconductor integrated circuits is accomplished by shrinking the device dimensions and by increasing the number of circuits per unit area on a semiconductor integrated circuit chip. Another part of reducing the cost of a semiconductor integrated circuit chip is to increase the yield. As is known in the semiconductor manufacturing art, the yield of chips (also know as die or dice) from each wafer is not 100% because of defects during the manufacturing process. The number of good die obtained from a wafer determines the yield. As can be appreciated, die that must be discarded because of a defect or defects increases the cost of the remaining usable die because the cost of processing the wafer must be amortized over the usable die.
A single semiconductor die requires numerous process steps such as oxidation, etching, metallization and wet chemical cleaning. Some of these process steps involve placing the wafer on which the semiconductor die are being manufactured into different tools during the manufacturing process. The optimization of each of these process steps requires an understanding of a variety of chemical reactions and physical processes in order to produce high performance, high yield circuits. The ability to rapidly identify and correctly classify the defects on a layer of a semiconductor chip is an invaluable aid to those involved in research and development, process, problem solving and failure analysis of integrated circuits.
In order to be able to quickly resolve process or equipment issues in the manufacture of semiconductor products, a great deal of time, effort and corporate resources have been and are being expended on the development of "recipes" that allow specific scan tools to capture silicon based defects. Present recipes are considered product/layer/tool specific, but with the advent of tool matching recipes of a particular tool type can be used across all tools of that type for the same product/layer with minor modifications. This allows recipe propagation to occur to all tools in a manufacturing environment with the recipes being copies (or propagated) to all tools of a same type.
The problem that has emerged is the problem of maintaining the current approved recipe for a certain product/layer on all tools, or ensuring that the correct recipe is always being used at any time on any tool. Whenever a recipe is either created or modified it needs to be propagated to the tools in question, requiring the recipe creator to go to each tool with a copy of the new or modified recipe and load it to the tool.
Therefore, what is needed is a recipe management system for multiple tools. The recipe management system needs to have the ability to communicate with the individual scan tools to ensure that the proper recipe is available immediately to all scan tools for any product/layer combination for which a recipe has been derived for that scan tool type. In addition, the recipe management system would have the ability to determine immediately if the correct recipe is loaded on the particular tool and if not the recipe management system would have the ability to immediately download the correct recipe to the scan tool.